Friday, February 13, 2015

This Isn't a Defeat; It's an Opportunity

I'm not especially distressed to see that Sun News Network is going off the air.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm far from happy about it. It's a shame, really. It's very unfortunate for a lot of people, no less for the Canadian viewing public than for anyone else.

In attempting to enter the television news market, Sun News was attempting to wade into a hostile market. Their competitors showed their hostility time and time again by attempting to deny them access, and by jealously guarding all the benefits that were helping them sustain their own operations.

There are numerous reasons for this. Some are doubtlessly political, others were financial. But they don't matter.

Television news is a fading, perhaps even dying, model. Not a year goes by without these networks laying off hundreds of employees. The big difference is that these networks enjoyed years of preferential market access that stabilized their operations enough for them to survive these annual shocks, and Sun didn't.

Too bad there's no other broadcast model other than TV.

Oh, wait. There is.

The number of means for people to fund the independent media of their choosing are numerous, and constantly growing. It's dawned on me that Sun News wasted a great deal of time and resources trying to barge its way into the traditional media market, when new media is growing unabated.

Between YouTube ad revenue and services such as Patreon -- which allow interested media consumers to directly support the media they wish to see on a monthly basis, sometimes in exchange for perks -- a Canadian conservative online news network is within our grasp, far more easily than you may realize.

This is something we can do. All we require is the will to do it.

Sun News Network shutting down may be sad, but it's not a defeat. It's merely a setback. It's not game-ending, no matter how the far-left may desire it to be.

This is an opportunity. Can we find it in ourselves to grasp it, or will we let it slip away? That's in our hands to decide.